On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home. Laura Elliot
is about perception. It’s not the story that’s important but how you tell it.
Carla Kelly had told her story badly. She wore a stretch top, skinny jeans and a fitted jacket, slim as a whippet after giving birth only five days previously. And she smiled for the cameras, such a silly thing to do. She lost the public sympathy with that smile. How could she, a mother so recently bereft, look as if she was enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame?
It gives me courage, that smile. The journalists use it every time they run with the story. The lingerie shots have also been dusted off and the tabloids are having a field day reproducing them. So too is Alyssa Faye. She writes about the woman who stole Isobel Gardner. Clichés and stereotypes, that’s all she writes. What does she know about anything? She milked my misery for all it was worth and now she milks Carla Kelly. Each weekend, she picks her bones clean, analyses her need for publicity, and how, by flaunting her pregnancy, she stirred a deep, dark well of longing. As for Josh Baker…he was a tabloid hack when I worked for Carter & Kay and now, five nights a week, he brings that same mentality to The Week on the Street. He’s convinced there’s a stalker involvement, which gives him an excuse to use the lingerie shots, and we see her in lacy briefs, her breasts plunging in the cups of a bra, hands upraised to her tousled hair.
Theories and analyses, speculation and investigation. When are they going to stop? Let the story die a natural death. Concentrate on the IRA, Clinton, Princess Di, Yasser Arafat, earthquakes, famines, war; the world still spins yet all they want to do is write about her. But they do not write about me. No one has looked at you and voiced suspicion. And if they did – if, for an instant, a seed of suspicion fluttered to the ground – Phyllis Lyons would crush it under her large, no-nonsense feet. She is determined that her story will not die.
I wasn’t frightened at first. At least, I don’t remember fear. Looking back, I realise I never believed it would happen. Never believed I could pull it off. Was I insane during those months? Living in a fantasy of my own creation?
I constantly surprise myself by remaining calm in the dangerous moments. Like when the district nurse finally drove her car down the lane and met you for the first time. She weighed you, jabbed your heel, dangled you like a monkey, and you clung to her fingers, danced in space, did nothing to betray me. I drove to St Anne’s Clinic and sat in the coffee bar with you asleep in the pram beside me. I met Gemma O’Neill who used to go to school with David. She is expecting her second baby and had just emerged from her appointment with Professor Langley. I told her I was there for my postnatal checkup. We talked about Phyllis, how well she’d coped on the night.
‘Imagine her having the nerve to cut the cord,’ said Gemma. ‘Were you terrified to let her do it?’
It seems that Phyllis’s version has grown wings. Let it fly. I’m not going to contradict her story.
‘I trusted her,’ I told Gemma. ‘What else could I do?’
‘Rather you than me,’ she replied, and shuddered at the horror of it all.
‘Forget natural birth,’ she said. ‘I yell for my epidural as soon as the first twinge kicks in.’
David had dinner ready when we arrived home from the clinic. Everything is in order, I assured him. You curled your fingers around his thumb and kicked your tiny feet against his large brown hands.
I write in the small hours when I cannot sleep. I need that space. Afterwards, I feel lighter, as if the weight of words has drained the memory from me. ‘No sense in two of us suffering sleepless nights,’ I tell David, when he demands the right to lie beside me, the right to rise at night and feed you, the right to be involved.
The dream is reality now. I must live with Carla Kelly on my shoulder. I can banish her during daylight hours but at night she is free to roam through my dreams. I see her bending over your cot or standing at the foot of my bed. Sometimes she cannot get in and then she rages outside my window, her blood-red nails clawing the glass. These are the hours I fear most. What if I call out her name in my sleep, beg her to leave me alone, beg her forgiveness from the mist of my dreams? What if David hears? That is why he must sleep alone.
If you should ever read this diary, I will be dead. All my worldly longings eased. Please do not think of me as an evil woman. Evil is a holocaust of bones, a bullet in the head, a knife in the belly. Fate is evil, smiling from the side of her bitchy mouth as she randomly kicks us about the place. For once in my life, I fought back and took what was lightly left lying around.
The streets of Maoltrán are slung with fairy lights. Carol singers rattle collection boxes and sing about joyful tidings. Miriam buys Christmas presents that ding and ping, and play tinkling lullabies. My father and Tessa arrived yesterday with a teddy bear three times your size, and a caseload of baby clothes. Your eyes widen when I switch on the Christmas tree lights. Your hands move with wondering curiosity to touch the green needles. Christmas suddenly has meaning and magic, says David, and puts his arm around me. We stand together and welcome the season of joy; a family at last.
You stir, wave your fists in the air. You drink us into your gaze then look beyond our shoulders, as if searching for someone we cannot see.
‘Angels,’ says Miriam. ‘Joy is following the flight of angels.’
Carla
Christmas was an obscenity wrapped in glitter paper. Carla wanted to go to a hotel and hide in an anonymous room until the festivities died down. The countryside drew her as it never had in the past and she was possessed by a longing to walk along a cliff or gaze at a meadow. But normality had to co-exist with abnormality and the Christmas dinner must be cooked and eaten. Her mother had invited her and Robert to dinner. She wept when Carla hesitated. Now that the sky had fallen, Janet found it an even heavier burden than she had anticipated.
‘My grandchild stolen,’ she cried. ‘I can’t endure it. I simply can’t endure it. You must spend Christmas with us. Your father will be heartbroken if you don’t. We have to support each other through this tragedy.’
On Christmas morning Carla awoke to the sound of bells. Robert was already standing by the window. He leaned his head forward until it touched the glass and Carla knew, before he turned, that he was weeping. They never wept together. An unspoken arrangement kept one of them strong whenever the other fell apart.
Downstairs, they exchanged gifts. She had spent an afternoon with Raine trying to decide what to buy for him. Everything they looked at was unsuitable, too festive or romantic, too flippant or meaningless. But what did she expect? A gift designed for loss? A cracked heart wrapped in tinsel, crystal teardrops? In the end she bought a cashmere sweater for him. The wool would be soft and kind on his skin, and the sea-blue shade reflected his eyes. He had bought her a painting. Carefully, she unwrapped it from its bubble wrapping and held it before her. She recognised the glacial mountains, the intense blue waters, the white belfry of a lakeside church. They had cruised on Lake Garda during their honeymoon, drifting through a lilac haze of hill and valley, drunk on love and the spreading length of their future together. Then it was her turn to cry. He held her to his chest and allowed her to vent her grief into his new sweater.
At noon they collected Raine and Gillian who had agreed to join Carla’s parents for Christmas dinner. Janet, labouring in the kitchen to produce the perfect meal, waved aside all offers of assistance.
‘Too many cooks bring on a panic attack,’ she warned and poured another glass of sherry. Shortly afterwards, Leo arrived with his wife. Gina’s baby was due in early January. She and Carla had talked many times about their pregnancies, comparing symptoms, weight gain and how the two cousins, so close in age, would grow up as friends. From the very early stages, Gina had gained weight and now, with only three weeks to go, her stomach was impossible to ignore. No one made any comment as she settled heavily into an armchair. Music played on the stereo, a little too loud, but it prevented strained silences when conversation died.
Gerard